Favorable wind blows for wind farms, for now

The pace of wind turbine installations picked up considerably last year, and Ohio was one of the main beneficiaries.

Bloomberg reports that developers installed wind turbines with 6,810 megawatts of capacity in the United States last year, 31% more than in 2010, “as they rushed to qualify for a federal-tax grant that expired last month.”

Fourth-quarter installations reached “3,444 megawatts, topping the first three quarters combined, led by California, Illinois and Ohio, the fastest-growing state, the American Wind Energy Association said (Thursday) in a report,” according to Bloomberg.

This summary of the report shows that Ohio in 2011 installed 101.5 megawatts of wind turbine capacity and now has a total of 112.4 megawatts of capacity, up 929% from its capacity at the end of 2010. The next four fastest-growing states were Vermont (up 625%), Massachusetts (151%) Idaho (75%) and Maryland (71%).

Idaho, at 617.2 megawatts, is much larger than Ohio in production capacity, while Maryland is about the same and the two others are much smaller.

New wind farms with capacity of more than 8,300 megawatts are under construction now, and developers “will try to complete them before another federal incentive expires Dec. 31,” the news service reports.

The Washington-based trade group is pressing Congress to extend the Production Tax Credit of 2.2 cents a kilowatt-hour for wind power “to prevent manufacturers from firing workers by 2013,” Bloomberg says.

Feed your brain

Dan Gilbert's “vast, seeming random (business) empire is a management consultant's nightmare,” but he makes it work, according to this short profile from Forbes.com.

“Building anything great is messy,” Mr. Gilbert says. The website notes that ideas, expertise and even employees “freely flow between companies on the theory that they're all one tight-knit family.” Mr. Gilbert's phrase for this: “eating our own dog food.”

Forbes.com estimates Mr. Gilbert is worth $1.5 billion and founded, owns or controls “about 40 loosely connected companies,” the largest of which is Quicken Loans and the most visible of which is the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The website takes a stab at an organizational chart for the Gilbert empire, and it's an intimidating web of overlapping businesses.

Mr. Gilbert seems to like it that way.

“There's nothing better than people talking to each other, sharing best practices and opening up communications,” he says. “This is a brain economy.”

It's complicated

Private equity is getting a bad name in the GOP presidential race, but this story from The Wall Street Journal paints a more nuanced picture of its role in the economy.

“Large public pension plans are pouring more money into private-equity funds, deepening ties between government workers and an industry currently under the harsh glare of U.S. presidential politics,” the newspaper reports.

Big public-employee pensions had about $220 billion invested in private equity in September, or 11% of their assets, according to Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service, which tracks the holdings of pensions, foundations and endowments. The Journal says that's “up about $50 billion from a year earlier, when such investments accounted for 8.6% of large pension funds' assets. A decade ago, pensions with at least $1 billion under management had just 3% of their money with private equity.”

The Journal notes that the Service Employees International Union this month blasted Bain Capital, the private equity firm formerly led by Mitt Romney, for what it described as "a long and troubling track record of putting profits above workers."

However, “SEIU members have pension money invested in numerous state and county pension plans around the U.S., many of which are invested in private-equity funds,” the newspaper notes. “And SEIU members serve on the pension boards that make decisions about where funds are invested.” (SEIU declined comment.)

The Journal notes that an SEIU member serves as a trustee of the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, which holds billions of dollars in private-equity investments and, in recent years, increased its target private-equity holdings to 7% of assets, from 5%.

OPERS officials say their primary duty is to secure the highest returns possible for public workers.

"Our board members are fiduciaries who act in the best interest of the fund, regardless of whatever political leanings they have personally'' or their unions have, says Julie Graham-Price, an OPERS spokeswoman.

This and that

Flying high: Cleveland-based TransDigm Group's acquisition this week of AmSafe Global Holdings, a privately held supplier of restraint equipment, for $750 million in cash and debt, reflects its “seemingly insatiable appetite for adding aerospace and defense niche players to its very diverse portfolio of companies,” according to this story from Investor's Business Daily.

“It's a classic TransDigm deal," Carter Leake, senior equity analyst at BB&T Capital Markets, tells the newspaper. "The barriers-to-entry on AmSafe's products are not quite as high as some of TransDigm's other mission-critical products, but AmSafe is a dominant player in this space, and we see the opportunity for pricing leverage that TransDigm is known for."

The newspaper says TransDigm “has a solid track record of successfully acquiring and integrating single-source and proprietary parts suppliers, providing it with a unique position in the market.” (AmSafe is its 39th acquisition since the company's inception in 1993.)

TransDigm “derives 95% of its sales from proprietary products, meaning it owns the intellectual property rights for them,” Investor's Business Daily reports. “And for about 80% of its revenue, TransDigm is the sole-source supplier to its customers.”

Come together: Reuters speculates that a fresh wave of consolidation might be afoot in the special chemicals industry.

The news service reports that Eastman Chemical is buying specialty chemical maker Solutia Inc. for about $3.38 billion in cash and stock to extend its reach in emerging markets, particularly the Asia-Pacific region.

In a research note, Jefferies analyst Laurence Alexander said the Eastman deal, along with Westlake Chemical's recent bid for Georgia Gulf Corp. “reflects a move toward consolidation among specialty chemical companies.”

Reuters adds that Mr. Alexander said other companies “generally thought to also be takeover candidates” include Omnova Solutions of Fairlawn, a producer of emulsion polymers, specialty chemicals and wallcoverings.